The John Milton Series Boxset 4 Read online

How did he get here?

  There was one other open door that led into the bathroom. He crossed the room and went inside.

  The room was small. There was a toilet and a basin with a small cupboard beneath it.

  He froze.

  There was a body on the floor.

  It was a woman. She was lying on her side with her torso between the cupboard and the toilet and her legs bent with her knees to her chest. Her dark hair was fanned out across the white tile. Her skin was pale, almost white, and it highlighted the obscene bruising around her exposed throat.

  Her head was angled toward him and he could see half of her face.

  It was Jessica.

  His stomach turned and the sick churned up from his gullet in a hot, acrid rush. Milton couldn’t hold it down. He stepped over the girl’s body and vomited into the sink, gout after gout of it until the sink was splattered and he was left feeling hollowed out and dizzy.

  “Hands up!”

  Milton turned around.

  The door to the bedroom was open and a woman was standing in the doorway. She was wearing a light blue shirt, a navy-blue skirt, and a navy-blue cap with a crest in the centre. Milton recognised it: Philippines National Police. The holster on her belt was empty. She had taken out a Glock 17 9mm pistol and was aiming it straight at him.

  “Hands!”

  Milton did as he was told.

  “You speak English?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Come out.”

  He looked at Jessica’s body again and then back at the officer.

  Am I responsible?

  “Step into the room.”

  Did I do that?

  Milton wanted to tell her that it wasn’t what it looked like, but the words caught in his throat. He knew why: he couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was exactly what it looked like. He couldn’t remember what had happened. Was it possible? He’d killed before, dozens of times, more than a hundred and fifty ghosts who had eventually ushered him along the road to sobriety. There had been another time, years earlier, when he had woken up with blood soaking his shirt, no memory of how it had got there, and then came a communiqué from Control congratulating him on a job well done.

  Is this the same?

  Did I kill her while I was drunk?

  He couldn’t say.

  He stepped out of the bathroom.

  “Knees. Now!”

  The police officer was young. She was holding her weapon a little too tightly, the butt clutched deep in her palm and her index finger too rigid around the trigger. Her hand shook, making the muzzle quiver, and Milton knew that disarming her would have been a simple thing.

  But he didn’t want to disarm her.

  He turned around, sank to his knees, and put his hands out behind his back so that the officer could cuff him.

  Part I

  Four Days Earlier

  1

  WILLIAM LOGAN stared out of the windshield, munching sunflower seeds and watching the rain streak down the glass. Russell Square might have been a desirable address once, but that time had long since passed. The grand terraces that hemmed in the square had been turned over to businesses, the houses carved up into offices. The local authority made only a passing attempt to keep the park tidy, and the benches arranged around it were as likely to be occupied by homeless drunks as by the night-shift workers who braved the rain for a cigarette beneath the shelter of the overhanging branches.

  It was coming up to ten at night. A thick bank of cloud had rolled over the capital, and the stars were hidden behind it.

  Logan had only just returned from Manila. His skin, usually so pale, was tanned and, if he closed his eyes, he could almost remember the warmth of the sun on his face. He had been there for two weeks, making preparations. The task he had been given was complicated and his target had a reputation that would have put doubt into the most confident operator. Logan had been responsible for similar assignments in the past, but this one was different.

  This was the first that had robbed him of sleep.

  He was reaching for the pack of sunflower seeds when he saw him. He was on foot, walking from the direction of the nearby tube station. There was nothing particularly impressive about him. He was a little over average height, around six feet tall. He had an athletic build, perhaps two hundred pounds. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a leather jacket. He had no umbrella, and the rain had plastered his dark hair to his scalp.

  Logan watched as the man paused at the corner of the square, waited for a taxi to roll through the puddles, and then crossed over to the single-storey structure that was set in the road next to the railings that encircled the small park. There were a handful of similar buildings all around London. Logan had seen them before and had been curious enough to investigate them online. They were shelters for taxi drivers, places where they could park their cabs and go for a cup of tea and something to eat. They had been around for years and much more numerous before competition made them less and less economic until—mostly—they were unsustainable.

  The man paused at the door, ran his hand through his wet hair to sweep it out of his face, and went inside.

  Logan leaned back in the seat and exhaled.

  Just watching John Milton made him nervous.

  2

  “I’LL BE OFF, THEN, LOVE.”

  The owner of the business was a bottle-blonde East Ender called Cathy. Milton took her coat from its hook and held it open so that she could put it on. It was a plastic raincoat with a leopard-skin print, the kind of gaudy style that summed her up. Milton had come to find it charming.

  Milton had been back in his job for a few weeks now. Cathy had taken him back on since her son, Carl, had decided that he didn’t want to follow in her footsteps and serve tea and baked beans on toast to the capital’s cabbies after all.

  “It’ll be quiet tonight,” she said.

  Milton nodded his agreement. He had been working at the shelter long enough to know that she was right. The rain would empty the streets, the cabbies would have less business, and many of them would call it a night and go home. The shelter would stay open, though. It was one of the things of which Cathy was most proud: the shelter had been open three hundred and sixty-five days a year for the last sixty years. She joked that not even Hitler had been able to make them shut. When Milton had pointed out that she had previously explained that her grandfather had only opened the shelter after the war, she had laughed and told him that she never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

  There was only one driver in the shelter tonight. He finished his can of Rio and handed it to Milton.

  “You still in Theydon Bois, darling?” he asked her.

  She raised a hand. “You don’t have to drive me, Cliff.”

  “Not a problem. I’m knocking it on the head. Nothing happening tonight. And I live out that way. No bother at all.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Save me walking to the tube in this filth.”

  Milton went over to clean the table. Cliff said goodbye and opened the door. Cathy told Milton that she would see him tomorrow, stepped over the threshold and followed Cliff to his cab. Milton took the dirty plate and mug to the sink and filled the basin with warm water. He watched through the small window as the lights of the cab flicked on. It set off around the square.

  He washed and dried the crockery, wiped his hands on the tea towel, and then went over to switch on the digital radio. He selected the pre-set for Planet Rock and, as the new single from the Dirty Pirates began to play, he filled the urn with cold water and set it to boil.

  THE NEW Metallica record was just winding down when Milton heard the door open.

  He turned to see who it was.

  “Evening.”

  Milton had never seen the man before. He was in his late forties or early fifties, much shorter than Milton at perhaps five seven or five eight, and slender. His hair was brown and full, held in place with enough product that Milton immediately suspected a little vanity. H
is face was lined, his chin bore a noticeable cleft, and his dark eyes were partially obscured behind the reflection on the lenses of his glasses.

  “Are you a driver?” Milton asked.

  “No,” the man said. “I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry. There are rules here. Only cabbies can come in. If you want anything, I’ll have to serve you through the hatch.”

  “I’m not here for refreshments.”

  “Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “I have a message for you, Mr. Milton.”

  Milton stopped. He very rarely used his real surname and had never done so here. “Do we know each other?”

  “No,” he said. “We’ve never met. But I know who you are. We’ve worked for the same employer.”

  Milton found that his throat had become dry. “The government?”

  The man nodded.

  “I haven’t worked for the government for a long time. I’m sorry to be rude, but, whatever it is, I’m not interested. I’m busy. You need to be going.”

  “It’s a personal matter. For you, I mean. I think you’ll want to hear it. It’s important—I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t.”

  Milton found that he had screwed up the tea towel.

  “I don’t—”

  “Please, Mr. Milton,” the man interrupted. “You’ll thank me.”

  Milton looked at him. There was nothing threatening about him, but he was more concerned about the message than the messenger.

  “Just five minutes. That’s all I ask.”

  Milton relented. “Five minutes.”

  The man took one of the bench seats. Milton picked up a stack of dirty crockery, went through into the kitchen and put it in the sink. The water was tepid, so he turned on the hot to warm it up, watching the man in the reflection offered by the darkened windowpane ahead of him. He wondered if he had seen him before, but he couldn’t place him. There were so many memories from his past that were cloaked by the fuzz of his drinking, others lost completely; he gave it a moment’s thought and then abandoned the attempt. There was no point in trying. He wouldn’t be able to remember.

  He poured two mugs of hot tea and took them over to the table. He handed one to the man and sat down opposite him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Logan. William Logan.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “I work at Manila Station. Have done for years.”

  Manila. That brought back memories. Milton had been to the Philippines twice, on two different assignments. The first had involved the death of an MI6 agent who had been selling secrets to the Russians and the Chinese. Milton remembered that very well: he had garrotted the man on a ferry between Manila and Cagayan de Oro and tossed the body over the side.

  “We were approached a week ago by a woman who said that she knows you. You were in Manila several years ago. Operation Attila. Do you remember? There was a company shipping surface-to-air missiles to the Maoists.”

  “Tactical Aviation,” Milton said.

  “That’s right. British chap at the helm.”

  The details came back. “Yes,” Milton said. “That’s right. Fitzroy de Lacey.”

  “You got him convicted, didn’t you?” Logan said rhetorically.

  Milton didn’t answer.

  “Been in jail ever since. Still there, as far as I know.”

  “What does your coming here have to do with him?”

  “It doesn’t,” Logan said. “Not really. It’s to do with you.”

  Milton sipped the tea. He had started to remember Attila and how much he had been drinking back then. He was nervous about what might come next.

  “There was a local woman involved with Tactical. I suppose, if you were being charitable, you’d say she was employed in a hospitality role. Her name was—”

  “Jessica,” Milton finished for him.

  “Jessica Sanchez.”

  “Yes,” Milton said. “I remember her.”

  “But Miss Sanchez was working for us, too. She was on our books. She helped you get into the company.”

  Milton shrugged. He wasn’t about to share what he could recall with a man whom he had never met before tonight.

  Logan seemed content to continue. “Miss Sanchez came to the embassy two weeks ago. Wanted to see you, in fact. I told her that was impossible—we don’t just arrange appointments between our agents and any Tom, Dick or Harriet who comes in off the street. But she was pushy. I told her no again, and then she said that she’d go to the local rag and spill everything about the operation to put de Lacey away. You probably don’t remember this, Milton, but Tactical had people in London on the payroll. Government people. She gave me some names and they checked out. She knows all of it. And some of these people are still in post. Some of them are senior now. It would be very embarrassing if that ever got out. Very bloody embarrassing indeed.” He sat back and spread his hands. “I tried to get rid of her, but she insisted. She had to speak to you. You and only you. And that, old boy, is why I flew halfway around the world to see you.”

  “How?” he said. “How did you find me?”

  “Wasn’t easy. I understand you had some trouble a few years ago. Went to ground for a bit?”

  Milton shrugged.

  “But things have calmed down since then?”

  Milton thought about that. It would be a stretch to say that things had calmed down, but at least he wasn’t being pursued by Control and the other crooked agents who had gone rogue with him.

  “It’s quieter,” Milton said, “and that’s how I like it. I prefer to keep a low profile.”

  “But you’re hardly off grid. I had to dig around a bit, but I found you eventually. They have files on all of us, especially people like you.”

  “Patently.”

  “Indeed,” Logan said with a smile. “Patently.”

  Milton found that he was gripping his mug tightly. There was no point in putting it off any more. “So,” he said, “you’d better tell me. What does Miss Sanchez want?”

  “That’s the thing,” Logan said. “Bit sensitive.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “She said that the two of you had a thing while you were over there. An affair. Not long. Just a couple of months.”

  Milton felt another twist of anxiety. He shrugged.

  “Well, the thing is—and I don’t suppose there’s any easy way to say this without dropping a great big bloody surprise in your lap—she says that she had a child after you left. She says it’s yours. You’re a daddy, old man.” He raised his mug ironically. “Cheers.”

  3

  LOGAN SAT in the back of the black cab and thought about the meeting.

  Had it gone well? He thought so. There was nothing to suggest that Milton had seen through the pretence that had been arranged for his benefit.

  Logan was not a foreign office functionary. He had never worked at Manila Station. He was not employed by the government, although he had worked for them as a contractor before. He was freelance and preferred it that way.

  He travelled a lot. He would accept the offer of a contract and then he would go and carry it out. He was thorough and diligent, spending as much time as the diktats of the operation allowed to research his victims and the lives that they led. It was his goal that he should know them as if he were a good friend.

  Milton had been much more interesting than anyone else that he had ever been sent to kill.

  He had heard of him before, of course. The existence of Group Fifteen had always been a badly kept secret within the intelligence community. Milton was one of the Group’s better known alumni, mostly because of the acrimonious nature of his departure and the desperate attempts of Milton’s corrupt handler to locate him and bring him to heel. The extent of Control’s perfidy had sounded the death knell for the Group, a fate that was underlined by the disappearance of the most recent head of the unit, Michael Pope. Group Fifteen had been mothballed, the agents dispersed, and steps taken to discreet
ly airbrush the whole sorry show from the annals of history.

  They had deleted Milton’s records, but his reputation lingered.

  Milton had been Her Majesty’s most dangerous assassin for many years, with more than one hundred and fifty confirmed kills to his name. He had been gone for years now, but Logan had found evidence of his handiwork in places as diverse as Ciudad Juarez, San Francisco, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and, most recently, London and Calais. It was obvious from his rather pitiful existence in London that he was trying to melt into civilian life, but a man like Milton couldn’t easily do that.

  Milton was a killer, and he would always be a killer.

  Death would be his constant companion.

  Their calling was the one thing that they had in common.

  Because Logan was a killer, too.

  LOGAN HAD a room at the Dorchester. He didn’t have a permanent address. He worked all around the world, and the itinerant life suited both his profession and his temperament. Nothing about him was permanent. His name wasn’t Logan, for example. It was the name of the man in his passport who bore his likeness. The picture was the same in his passports from Australia, Canada, the USA, Ireland, and Germany. Only the name changed.

  He had been in the Special Boat Service for five years before he had resigned to work on his own account. British intelligence was moving away from a formalised department like Group Fifteen, preferring the greater discretion offered by a series of unconnected agents who had no formal ties to the government nor any knowledge of one another. The men and women who gave Logan government work tended to be drawn from the same small class of senior agency staff, and it was they who stood between him and his ultimate clients: a diplomatic mission with troublesome locals, perhaps a trade envoy who wanted to remove a customs official who was proving to be troublesome for British businesses, or underworld figures who were threatening vested interests. Other jobs—like this one—were passed to him after he had been recommended by previous clients.